World Telecom Labs (WTL) has launched a new SMS hub, allowing African mobile operators to keep their traffic on the continent rather than sending it overseas.
Currently, the majority of African mobile networks use services such as Infobip, in the United Kingdom, or Syniverse, in the United States, as the exchange point when SMSs are sent from their network to a rival operator.
The Easy SMS Hub however gives African networks the chance to cut out that middle-man and reduces costs for clients such as Nigeria-based ICN.
Leigh Smith, managing director of WTL, said: “The advantages of bringing SMS routing in-house are clear: increased revenues and reduced costs. ICN know from experience that we deliver what we promise – in this case, a reliable system to establish, manage and maintain as SMS Hub.”
ICN is an interconnect exchange carrier, which was established to increase competition and transparency in the Nigerian telecommunications industry.
All Nigerian networks are required to pass at least 10 per cent of their inter-carrier voice and SMS traffic through exchanges such as ICN, rather than using a foreign provider.
ICN will be the first Easy SMS Hub customer for WTL and while the initial plan is to build a hub to interconnect Nigeria’s native operators with each other, the ultimate goal is to facilitate the exchange between the Nigerian networks and their international counterparts.
Uche Onwudiwe, chief operating office at ICN, said: “We are an ambitious company and we will be looking extend our SMS hub service to overseas companies in the near future. We know that Easy SMS Hub will be easy and cost-effective to scale as our business grows and that’s extremely important to us.”
